Usage without Row Models about drift

[simolus3]

I think I understand what you want, and I agree that allowing more flexibility in the way queries are interpreted can be useful. But drift can already do most of these things, at least kind of. So it would be good to know what you've tried and what hasn't worked for you.

Through selectOnly, it's possible to obtain a TypedResult row which behaves in a similar way to rows from Exposed. You can call read with an expression, including table columns (which aren't static getters in drift but you can do row.read(myTable.someProp)). This allows omitting fields and combining multiple tables with joins. Is this kind of what you are looking for (or if not, what makes this inconvenient for you)?

I think we could still support a way to disable builtin row classes, for instance by letting users write @UseRowClass(TypedResult) or @UseRowClass(Map). I want to mention that @UseRowClass(Record) is already a way to make drift emit considerably less code by using records instead of custom row classes. But if you need that dynamic expressiveness, are row classes actively standing in the way or is that still possible with selectOnly and other advanced query builder APIs?

[clragon]

I see, yes.

    (selectOnly(identitiesTable)..addColumns([identitiesTable.id]))
        .map((row) => row.read(identitiesTable.id)!)
        .watchSingle();

    (selectOnly(identitiesTable)..addColumns(identitiesTable.$columns))
        .map((row) => row.read(identitiesTable.id))
        .watchSingle();

these things work fine. I knew about selectOnly + addColumns but didnt realize I had to use the generated tables.

I guess this syntax doesnt necessarily feel intuitive to me but I have the feeling we probably cant do much better in dart because of the lack of reflection. An option for no RowClass would not be terrible as I prefer less code generation, but I assume we cant get rid of it entirely.